Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1Introduction
In the opening years of the twenty-first century, the
phenomenon of shrinking cities has many examples in
most developed countries [1]. According to Wiechmann
[2], 54% of the European cities lost population in the
period from 1996 to 2001. The phenomenon of urban
shrinkage is based on several processes of
transformation [3]. According to Fernandez and Wu [4],
the essential forces that cause urban decline have been
Industrialization/Deindustrialization,
Globalization,
Population Transition and Climate Change.
Shrinking cities have used several strategies to
address the problem [5, 6]. Shrinking smart [7] and
smart growth [8] strategies emerge as the most common
solutions [9]. Planning approaches dealing with smart
shrinking strategies can be grouped in two categories:
greening and re-sizing, while smart growth strategies
are oriented to alter the population decline process.
In the literature we can find a lot about the
traditional approach on the urban planning and urban
economy, which has been concerned with growth and in
its consequences. The subjects related with the
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
2. Literature review
2.1. Population shrinkage
Changes in the number of inhabitants in the
jurisdictions, whether they are countries, regions,
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
Shrinkage
smart
strategies
imply
the
reconfiguration of infrastructures to the new dimension
of population, increasing often per capita spending.
However, not all infrastructures are equally capable to
readjust to shrinking population figures, being the water
and sewerage supply the most inelastic. Under this
overprovision of services, local public budgets
sustainability would only be feasible with gradual grants
from central governments [33]. Seitz and Kempkes [27]
found, for Germany, that 1% population decrease
generates a similar loss on tax revenues of sub-national
governments.
The planning tools most widely used are prone to
new development of land, new construction and more
public infrastructure as an incentive to attract economic
activity, while during shrinkage the required public
intervention, in contrast, should favour the recycling of
land and buildings or the adaptation of public facilities
to meet the residents changing needs [34]. In fact,
planning for shrinkage is fundamentally different from
planning for growth [35].
Glaeser and Gyourko [36] state that growth
typically results in rapid population increases with
stable house values, while decline is associated with
slow population decline with rapid property
devaluation. The most widespread strategies to deal
with shrinkage emerge from the American and German
experiences that were confronted with huge vacant
housing problems. In the United States, political
intervention is more in affinity with growth where
shrinkage is seen as a kind of stigma [37, 38, 39].
Local authorities of Germany had to rethink land
occupation. The governmental initiatives in Germany
cover a wide array of interventions. Many opt for
promoting policies toward the revitalisation of city
centres, consequently deactivating underused public
services, and demolishing vacancies. Some are
concerned with altering the physical footprint of the
cities, such as turning existing brown fields into green
spaces [40, 41, 42, 43]. Other common local policy
followed in Germany concerns the transformation of
declining cities into creative knowledge cities. When
cities succeed in attracting or retaining high-skilled
human capital, this tends to be positively correlated with
population growth and a better quality of life [44].
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
Coefficient
t-Statistic
-1.36938
-0.444365
0.324852
-15.0221*
-4.8436*
8.8368*
1.921
0.999
4676.259
0.535
* Statistically significant a 1%
young(-1)
old(-4)
employment(-2)
Durbin-Watson stat
Adjusted R2
F-statistic
Sum squared resid
Coefficient
t-Statistic
-1.91148
-0.170390
0.335462
-11.8268*
-2.6430*
5.0523*
1.811
0.999
5068.796
0.581
* Statistically significant a 1%
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
-0,2138
0,1954
0,1479
-2,1024*
1,1248**
2,2116*
1,974
0,944
97,82
0,586
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
young (-4)
old (-2)
employment (-1)
Durbin-Watson stat
Adjusted R2
F-statistic
Sum squared resid
Coefficient
t-Statistic
-0,6170
1,0026
0,1413
-5,7169*
3,2306*
2,5872*
Coefficient
t-Statistic
-0,2071
0,6388
0,2306
-2,5254*
3,7565*
4,1449*
2,008
0,933
78,742
0,420
* Statistically significant a 1%
4. Final remarks
Lear to grow smaller is a difficult task for the local
government of shrinking municipalities with cities of
Portugal, feeling preferable to postpone the inevitable
decline by any possible means. The general perception
is that accept decline of inhabitants and the consequent
loss of the municipal receipts is equivalent to accept a
defeat. The present research helps to foresee that the
reduction of the municipality inhabitants is not followed
by the reduction in the public expenditure because the
local governments resist in accepting the decline, even
when this is a persistent phenomenon, insisting in
strategies that aim to attract inhabitants. The rigidity of
some costs, associated with the oversized provision of
certain public services and infrastructures also
contributes for the lack of adjustment of municipal
expenditures. The decrease of inhabitants has
implications for the budgetary health of the
municipalities. The behaviour of rejecting shrinkage
leads to spirals of persistent deficits. The current crisis
of debt and the external intervention in Portugal, which
imposes a cut of 350 million of Euros in the grants for
the municipalities, between 2012 and 2013, will force
municipalities to adapt to lower budgets and,
consequently to cut wisely on the public expenditure.
Further research to evaluate the impact of the
housing crisis in municipal budgets are also need, only
possible to assess when statistics on Local Finance
subsequent to 2010 become available, as well as the
study of the impact of the contraction imposed by
foreign aid, with effect from of 2012. Only with this
1,826
0,851
32,872
0,446
* Statistically significant a 1%
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
References:
[1]. Beauregard, R.A. Voices of Decline, The Postwar
Fate of US Cities. Routledge, New York, 2003.
[2]. Wiechmann, T. Errors expected- aligning urban
strategy with demographic uncertainty in shrinking
cities. International Planning Studies,13, 2008, pp.
431-446.
[3]. Beauregard, R.A. Aberrant cities: Urban population
loss in the United States, 1820-1930. Urban
Geography, 24(8),2003, pp. 672690.
[4]. Fernandez C.M.and Wu, C.T. Shrinking Cities: A
Global Overview and Concerns about Australian
Mining Cities Cases. In: The Future of Shrinking
Cities - Problems, Patterns and Strategies of Urban
Transformation in a Global Context. Pallagst, K
(Ed). Berkeley, USA,2009.
[5]. Loures, L., Horta, D., Santos, A. and Panagopoulos
T. Strategies to reclaim derelict industrial areas.
WSEAS Transactions on Environment and
Development, 2(5), 2006, pp. 599604.
[6]. Loures L., Panagopoulos T., From derelict
industrial areas towards multifunctional landscapes
and urban renaissance. WSEAS Transactions on
Environment and Development Vol. 3 (10), 2007,
181-188.
[7]. Van den Berg, L. Urban Europe: A Study of
Growth and Decline. Pergamon Press, Oxford,
1982.
[8]. Gabriel, S.A., Faria, J.A. and Moglen, G.E. A
multiobjective optimization approach to smart
growth in land development. Socio-Economic
Planning Sciences, 40, 2006,pp. 212248.
[9]. Loures, L., Burley, J., Panagopoulos, T.,
Postindustrial
Landscape
Redevelopment:
addressing the past, envisioning the future.
International Journal of Energy and Environment,
5(5), 2011, 714-724.
[10]. Chernick, H., Langley, A.Reschovsky, A. The
impact of the Great Recession and the housing
crisis on the financing of Americas largest cities.
Regional Science and Urban Economics, 41, 2011,
pp. 372381.
[11]. Hollbach-Grmig, B., Trapp, J. The impact of
demographic change on local and regional
Acknowledgements
This study was supported partly by the Fundao para a
Cincia e a Tecnologia (FCT), Centro de Investigao
sobre Espao e Organizaes (CIEO) and the COST
Action TU0803 Cities Regrowing Smaller Fostering
Knowledge on Regeneration Strategies in Shrinking
Cities across Europe.
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
10
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
11
E-ISSN: 2224-3496
12